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In this work we are concerned with the design of efficient mechanisms while eliciting limited information from the agents. First, we study the performance of sampling approximations in facility location games. Our key result is to show that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-26 Ioannis Anagnostides , Dimitris Fotakis , Panagiotis Patsilinakos

In this paper we consider the so-called Multi-returning secretary problem, a version of the Secretary problem in which each candidate has $m$ identical copies. The case $m=2$ has already been completely solved by several authors using…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-10-16 L. Bayon , P. Fortuny , J. M. Grau , A. Oller Marcen , M. M. Ruiz

In the classical secretary problem, $n$ ranked items arrive one by one, and each item's rank relative to its predecessors is noted. The observer must select or reject each item as it arrives, with the object of selecting the item of highest…

Probability · Mathematics 2023-07-21 Ross G. Pinsky , Tomer Zilca

We present prior robust algorithms for a large class of resource allocation problems where requests arrive one-by-one (online), drawn independently from an unknown distribution at every step. We design a single algorithm that, for every…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-03-12 Nikhil R. Devanur , Kamal Jain , Balasubramanian Sivan , Christopher A. Wilkens

Given a source of iid samples of edges of an input graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, how many samples does one need to compute a constant factor approximation to the maximum matching size in $G$? Moreover, is it possible to obtain…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-07-15 Michael Kapralov , Slobodan Mitrović , Ashkan Norouzi-Fard , Jakab Tardos

Let S_n=X_1+...+X_n be a sum of independent symmetric random variables such that |X_{i}|\leq 1. Denote by W_n=\epsilon_{1}+...+\epsilon_{n} a sum of independent random variables such that \prob{\eps_i = \pm 1} = 1/2. We prove that…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-11-13 Dainius Dzindzalieta , Matas Šileikis , Tomas Juškevičius

In this paper, we study twelve stochastic input models for online problems and reveal the relationships among the competitive ratios for the models. The competitive ratio is defined as the worst ratio between the expected optimal value and…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2017-09-25 Yasushi Kawase

We consider the setting of online computation with advice, and study the bin packing problem and a number of scheduling problems. We show that it is possible, for any of these problems, to arbitrarily approach a competitive ratio of $1$…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-08-06 Marc P. Renault , Adi Rosén , Rob van Stee

We study stochastic programs where the decision-maker cannot observe the distribution of the exogenous uncertainties but has access to a finite set of independent samples from this distribution. In this setting, the goal is to find a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-12-24 Bart P. G. Van Parys , Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani , Daniel Kuhn

In this paper, we investigate the optimal strategies in the Werewolf Game-a widely played strategic social deduction game involving two opposing factions-from a game-theoretic perspective. We consider two scenarios: the game without a…

General Economics · Economics 2025-10-20 ST Wang

We model the joint distribution of choice probabilities and decision times in binary choice tasks as the solution to a problem of optimal sequential sampling, where the agent is uncertain of the utility of each action and pays a constant…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2015-05-14 Drew Fudenberg , Philipp Strack , Tomasz Strzalecki

Equivalence testing, a fundamental problem in the field of distribution testing, seeks to infer if two unknown distributions on $[n]$ are the same or far apart in the total variation distance. Conditional sampling has emerged as a powerful…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Diptarka Chakraborty , Sourav Chakraborty , Gunjan Kumar , Kuldeep S. Meel

We solve the secretary problem in the case that the ranked items arrive in a statistically biased order rather than in uniformly random order. The bias is given by a Mallows distribution with parameter $q\in(0,1)$, so that higher ranked…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-02 Ross G. Pinsky

We consider the best-choice problem for independent (not necessarily iid) observations $X_1, \cdots, X_n$ with the aim of selecting the sample minimum. We show that in this full generality the monotone case of optimal stopping holds and the…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-10-13 Alexander Gnedin , Patryk Kozieł , Małgorzata Sulkowska

We model a procurement scenario in which two \textit{imperfect} bidders act simultaneously on behalf of a single buyer, a configuration common in display advertising and referred to as \textit{side-by-side bidding} but largely unexplored in…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-05 Benjamin Heymann

We study a contest in which $N$ players sequentially draw from a distribution as many times as they want at a fixed cost per draw, with no recall, and the highest accepted value wins a prize. In the unique symmetric equilibrium, the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-28 Emre Ozdenoren , Murat Erkurt

The vertex cover problem is a famous combinatorial problem, and its complexity has been heavily studied. While a 2-approximation can be trivially obtained for it, researchers have not been able to approximate it better than 2-\textit{o}(1).…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Majid Zohrehbandian

This note considers a variation of the full-information secretary problem where the random variables to be observed are independent and identically distributed. Consider $X_1,\dots,X_n$ to be an independent sequence of random variables, let…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-09-11 José A. Islas

Maximizing the revenue from selling _more than one_ good (or item) to a single buyer is a notoriously difficult problem, in stark contrast to the one-good case. For two goods, we show that simple "one-dimensional" mechanisms, such as…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-22 Sergiu Hart , Noam Nisan

We study the equivalence testing problem where the goal is to determine if the given two unknown distributions on $[n]$ are equal or $\epsilon$-far in the total variation distance in the conditional sampling model (CFGM, SICOMP16; CRS,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-08-23 Diptarka Chakraborty , Sourav Chakraborty , Gunjan Kumar